mobrien
Masters Student
Posts: 459
Loc: New York
Reg: 04-18-17
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05-23-24 10:56 AM - Post#368628
Not much to say. Okpara is going to the one school where there's basically no academic tradeoff while also getting paid.
With Kyle Smith there, pretty easy to imagine Stanford turning themselves into an Ivy all-star team going forward. If, that is, the league continues to get players good enough to be worth going after.
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HARVARDDADGRAD
Postdoc
Posts: 2776
Loc: New Jersey
Reg: 01-21-14
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05-23-24 04:26 PM - Post#368665
In response to mobrien
We've lost players to Georgetown and Stanford.
Scholarship + potential NIL can't be offset by loss of the Harvard brand in these instances.
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Penndemonium
Postdoc
Posts: 2067
Reg: 11-29-04
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05-27-24 05:08 AM - Post#368763
In response to HARVARDDADGRAD
Better weather in both cases too.
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PennFan10
Postdoc
Posts: 3636
Reg: 02-15-15
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05-28-24 10:22 AM - Post#368774
In response to Penndemonium
Opportunity is to go get other overlooked High School players that are under recruited. There are other Okpara's, Mack, Perkins, Wolfe's out there. Can't change the NIL and cherry picking but Ivy coaches can take advantage of the talent that isn't getting any attention due to portal recruiting.
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HARVARDDADGRAD
Postdoc
Posts: 2776
Loc: New Jersey
Reg: 01-21-14
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05-28-24 03:08 PM - Post#368793
In response to PennFan10
Recruiting overlooked talent isn't the problem. If you do so successfully, the difficulty is that they leave in a year or two (e.g., Mack, Okpara).
Unfortunately, what you are suggesting is what we've all been doing for years, only if we get it right we've been enjoying the benefits for 3 or 4 years. Even then, we might have benefitted from the spector of a 5th year for our graduates and transfers. The difference is that our best recruits will leave after 1 or 2 seasons.
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SomeGuy
Professor
Posts: 6586
Reg: 11-22-04
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05-31-24 05:25 AM - Post#368902
In response to HARVARDDADGRAD
The key difference is that the high majors are recruiting the portal more, which leads to more opportunities for the Ivies to recruit top talent at the high school level. So there could be more of these types of talents to get.
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HARVARDDADGRAD
Postdoc
Posts: 2776
Loc: New Jersey
Reg: 01-21-14
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05-31-24 10:14 AM - Post#368922
In response to SomeGuy
Interesting point, although the portal seems to implicate the NIL whereas HS recruits probably less so.
Will this emulate baseball in that respect - with small market teams relying on home grown pre-free agent talent. Of course, those baseball teams (Oakland, Kansas City) can trade that young and inexpensive talent for more young talent and an occasional older player. MLB teams losing players to free agency also get a qualifying draft pick. In our situation, young players can just transfer, are immediately eligible to play, and we get nothing in return.
I appreciate the 'free market', but in this instance the father of economics - Adam Smith - is slapping us around with his 'invisible hand.' This wouldn't surprise Smith though, as he also referred to the selfish tendency of "[a]ll for ourselves and nothing for other people." I expect Ivy basketball to become a mere feeder 'minor' league for the Power Conferences when it comes to basketball talent capable of moving on up and attracting scholarship and NIL monies. Maybe the gates were inexorably opened once the NCAA removed the one year delay in eligibility for transfers, thereby unleashing the most effective restriction on the free market.
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SomeGuy
Professor
Posts: 6586
Reg: 11-22-04
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Okpara to Stanford
05-31-24 06:22 PM - Post#368941
In response to HARVARDDADGRAD
Fair points. One other thought on where the sell might be here though. If you are an immediate impact player, would you come to Harvard this year to play second fiddle to Mack and Okpara for 2-3 years and then only be the man your senior year? Or would you go elsewhere looking for that chance to immediately be the big dog? The churn may actually improve the Ivies chances of getting higher level talent who wants to play — and star — right away. So in a sense maybe Harvard does get a draft pick that they wouldn’t otherwise have when they lose a Mack.
Edited by SomeGuy on 05-31-24 06:23 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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weinhauers_ghost
Postdoc
Posts: 2245
Age: 65
Loc: New York City
Reg: 12-14-09
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Re: Okpara to Stanford
05-31-24 06:36 PM - Post#368942
In response to SomeGuy
That scenario doesn't seem to do much for the idea of building a team with chemistry and continuity.
As we've seen repeatedly, young teams with multiple one and done players can be taken out by veteran mid major teams.
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SomeGuy
Professor
Posts: 6586
Reg: 11-22-04
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Re: Okpara to Stanford
06-01-24 08:30 AM - Post#368947
In response to weinhauers_ghost
Yes, it completely flips the traditional Ivy strength (continuity and experience) on its head. The idea now would be to be more talented but less experienced. Kind of a moneyball approach of finding what might be undervalued by the high majors (which has totally shifted).
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HARVARDDADGRAD
Postdoc
Posts: 2776
Loc: New Jersey
Reg: 01-21-14
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10-16-24 11:16 AM - Post#373048
In response to SomeGuy
Excerpt from an Article in Harvard Magazine:
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2024/11/nil-harvar...
Okpara was happy with his team, academics, and social life. But in April, star first-year point guard Malik Mack entered the transfer portal, which allowed coaches from other schools to recruit him. Soon after, fellow Ivy League sophomores Danny Wolf (Yale) and Kalu Anya (Brown) followed suit. Anya, a childhood friend, counseled Okpara to “just enter your name,” Okpara recalls. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. You can always come back.”
Once Okpara entered the transfer portal, schools ranging from Auburn and Texas to Stanford and Vanderbilt pursued him. These schools, he said, told him he could make between $200,000 and $500,000 by playing for their basketball team. On May 22, he committed to Stanford, where he will play against stronger competitors while earning a significant amount of money.
Had he been a student five years ago, Okpara would likely still be at Harvard. In that span, the economics and regulation of college sports have drastically changed. As of summer 2021, students have been permitted to earn money for use of their name, image, and likeness (NIL) and to transfer without penalty. The top echelon of sports, like men’s basketball and football, now more closely resembles professional athletics than pre-NIL college athletics.
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